Gibco® Rat Primary Astrocytes

Gibco® Rat Primary Cortical Astrocytes are isolated from the cortices of Sprague-Dawley rats at embryonic day 19 (E19) and cryopreserved at the end of the first passage (the cells can be further expanded for at least two additional passages). Each vial contains 1 × 106 cells. They exhibit ≥70% viability after thawing, and ≥80% stain positive for the astrocyte-specific marker glial fibrillary acid protein (GFAP).

Superior cell viability

Figure 1. Viability was determined by trypan blue exclusion using the Countess™ Cell Counter. Gibco® Rat Primary Cortical Astrocyte viability is more than 80%, while astrocyte viability from a competitor is about 50%.

Superior proliferation potential

Gibco® Rat Primary Cortical Astrocytes are cryopreserved at the end of passage 1 (P1), and can be recovered and further expanded for at least 2 additional passages (Figure 2).

Figure 2. Rat Cortical Astrocytes were thawed and cultured in astrocyte medium containing 85% high glucose DMEM and 15% fetal bovine serum. Cells were passaged every eight days by dissociation and replating on a plastic culture vessel.

Gibco® Rat Primary Cortical Astrocytes stain positive for astrocyte-specific marker glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP) upon expansion. Figure 3 shows more than 80% of cells are positive for GFAP and less than 10% of the cells stain positive for neuron and oligodendrocyte markers.

Figure 3. Fluorescence images (20X) of Rat Cortical Astrocytes at P2 cultured for 3 days and stained for the appropriate phenotypic markers. Nuclei were stained with DAPI (blue). While approximately 80% of the cells stain positive for the astrocyte marker GFAP (A), less than 10% of the cells are positive for immature neuronal marker doublecortin (DCX) (B) and oligodentrocyte marker galactosylceramide (GalC) (C).